FAA Wants End to "Helicopter Shopping"

Helicopter Emergency Medical Service (EMS) operators in Indiana have taken up the FAA's call to head off the practice of "helicopter shopping", considered a leading contributor of EMS accidents. The head of the agency's Air Transport Div., James Ballough, recently distributed a letter asking state agencies and associations, which play a role in regulating helicopter EMS operations, to adopt policies to prevent helicopter shopping. That phrase refers to the practice of calling, in sequence, various operators until an operator agrees to take a flight assignment, without sharing with subsequent operators the reasons the flight was declined by the previously called operators. The FAA wants a requirement that every operator called be told whether another operator previously declined a mission and why. Indiana Association of Air Medical Services President Rex Alexander raised the issue before the Indiana State EMS commission this week. More